Conventionally widely known are conveying robots that convey a laminated workpiece (hereinafter, referred to as a “wafer”), such as a semiconductor wafer and a liquid crystal panel. Also known are conveying systems provided with such a conveying robot in a local clean room (hereinafter, referred to as a “conveyance room”) arranged between a container of a wafer and a processing room for the wafer.
An area such as the container and the processing room described above (hereinafter, referred to as a “transfer position”) is typically provided at such a position that a rotation axis of a conveying robot is not located on an extension of a trajectory of a hand that accesses the transfer position, that is, at an offset position (refer to Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2008-28134, for example).
The conventional conveying system has room for further improvement to increase throughput in conveying processing of a wafer. Specifically, if all the transfer positions are provided at offset positions as described above, a change in the posture of an arm of the conveying robot tends to be made large, resulting in reduction in throughput in the conveying processing.